Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Julian Barnes was announced last night as the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending. In beautifully concise (and, controversially, rather readable) prose, the novel recounts the efforts of a middle-aged man to make sense of past relationships and their unintended consequences. I thought it was a worthy winner, and it's nice to see Barnes (three times an also-ran) getting the acclaim he deserves.

I jumped on this book when it came out because of several comments I had seen about its theme of memory. All novels are about memory, of course, but this one seemed to be taking seriously a reconstructive view of how we remember: the various ways in which who we are now can change how we make sense of what happened then. On the very first page, the protagonist Tony questions the reliability of his own testimony: 'This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.'

And yet the well-documented unreliability of memory isn't quite as interesting to Barnes as its regular habits. When Tony hears about the existence of his late friend Adrian's diary, he wonders whether getting hold of it will dislodge his remembering from the ruts it has been stuck in. Reading Adrian's diary, he thinks, 'might disrupt the banal reiterations of memory. It might jump-start something—though I had no idea what' (p. 77).

Tony is struggling to uncover a truth about the past, and the fact that he always remembers things in the same way is an obstacle to progress. Barnes recognises, even celebrates, the slippery truth of memory, and sees Tony's infuriating constancy of memory as stemming from the habitual nature of his storytelling about the past, rather than from any object-like permanence of his memory representations. Remembering happens in the present moment, and each act of remembering is shaped and constrained by what has gone before. We create memory fictions—the same fictions—so many times over that they come to have a special kind of constancy. It's not that we're laying them down in some permanent store and repeatedly accessing their immutable truths. Rather, we make memories in the present tense, according to the needs of the present. If they tell the same story each time, it's because they are more like habits than things.

The Sense of an Ending presents the most sophisticated view of memory I have seen in fiction for a while, and it offers a nice antidote to descriptions of remembering that liken it to the loading of a mental DVD containing a faithful representation of a past event. On another occasion, the old-fashioned view of memory creeps in, such as when Tony complains (about one episode of forgetting) that 'my brain must have erased it from the record' (p. 119). Memory is not a tape recorder: it has neither a playback head nor a record one, and the analogy is as misleading as it is entrenched.

One of the most interesting parts of the novel describes how a shift in Tony's feelings towards his former lover’s parents unlocks new memories of their relationship:

But what if, even at a late stage, your emotions relating to those long-ago events and people change? … I don’t know if there’s a scientific explanation for this… All I can say is that it happened, and that it astonished me.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape, 2011), p. 120

I would be the last to want to apply a reductionist method to understanding fiction that's as good as this, but these kinds of circumstance crop up frequently in the modern science of memory. As is the case in memories for trauma, changing your current interpretation of a past event can change the way you remember it. You recall the emotionality of an event differently, for example, according to whether you are asked to recall it from a first-person point of view (where you are more likely to focus on emotions and feelings) or from a third-person perspective (where you are more likely to concentrate on the actual facts of the matter) [1].

More than just being about memory, though, I think this novel is a return to one of Barnes' favourite themes: that of the self in time. As Tony comments right at the outset, 'we live in time—it holds us and moulds us—but I've never felt I understood it very well.' I recall (probably badly, through the dusty pane of memory) a passage from Barnes' first novel, Metroland, in which the narrator comments that everyone is born to fit best into a particular lifestage. Which means, he expands, that you can come across people in their teens who really would be more at home in their own lives if they were in their forties, so that when they eventually reach that age it's like a homecoming.

I'd love to back this up with a quotation, if anyone remembers it. Tony's problem is that he never quite works out where in his life he fits best. It was that sense of a self trying to find its place in time that struck me most about this memorable literary winner.

Buy A Box Of Birds

Buy Pieces of Light (UK)

A Box of Birds: Reviews

'Arrestingly good prose… A thought-provoking novel that wrestles with the fundamentals of human nature.' Financial Times

'The plot, which flies past at genuine ‘page turner’ pace, involves a race to map the (fictional) Lorenzo Circuit, ‘the deep root-system of the self… the basis of memory, emotion and consciousness in the human brain’… I’m grateful for the siren warnings from the storytelling machine that is Charles Fernyhough.' The Psychologist

'A pleasantly sardonic narrator… There is… a certain edgy propulsion to the story, and the reveal of what is really going on in the bowels of Sansom’s research centre is deliciously horrible and deftly understated.' Guardian

'Part love story, part race against time to beat the baddies, Fernyhough can certainly write.' Daily Mail

'It’s rare these days to read a writer who cares about ideas in the way that the great nineteenth-century novelists did... This is both a serious novel and a great read.' Sara Maitland

'Exhilarating, thought-provoking and well worth the wait.' Andrew Crumey

Pieces of Light: Reviews

'Pieces of Light is utterly fascinating and superbly written. I learned more about memory from this book than any other. There are few science books around of this class.' Guardian

'Thoughtful… a deft guide to discoveries that have led memory researchers to stress the centrality of storytelling.' Booklist

'As absorbing as it is thought-provoking.' Sunday Business Post

'Remarkable storytelling skills... Seamlessly intersperses the personal aspects of [his] journey with descriptions of cutting-edge research into spatial naviation and memory manipulation, as well as new ideas about how memory works.' Moheb Costandi, Scientific American MIND

'With elegance and clinical sympathy, Fernyhough tells the stories of patients with various forms of brain damage that result in amnesia... a good, accessible read for anyone interested in their own recollections.' Professor Steven Rose, BBC Focus Magazine

'An absorbing guidebook to the mysterious terrain of human memory... In the tradition of Oliver Sacks’ casually shrewd scientific writing, the book blends dispatches from the frontiers of science with compassionate human anecdotes. Fernyhough’s enthralling narrative delivers gripping insight on the way memories shape our lives.'Editors’ Choice for w/c 19 March, iBookstore

'Weaving scientific research from psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, Fernyhough explains that our brains don’t record experiences as cameras do; rather, we store key elements, then reconstruct the experiences when we need them, imbuing them with present-day feelings and the benefit of hindsight.' Washington Post(read more)

'In its stunning blend of the literary with the scientific, Pieces of Light illuminates ordinary and extraordinary stories to remind us that who we are now has everything to do with who we were once, and that identity itself is intricately rooted in transporting moments of remembrance. We are what we remember.' André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt and Harvard Square

'His examination [is] welcoming and accessible to lay readers. His analysis is wide-ranging... He also covers a wide swath of literary and historical ground... A refreshingly social take on an intensely personal experience.' Publishers Weekly (read more)

'A multidisciplinary approach to explaining memory... Will be intriguing for readers interested in the borderlands where memoir, fiction and science overlap.' Kirkus Reviews (read more)

'In this lyrical exploration of our powers of recall, psychologist and novelist Charles Fernyhough argues that our memories are worth cherishing - even though some of what we think we remember is, in fact, fiction.' New Scientist Books of the Year (read more)

'In Pieces of Light, Charles Fernyhough has had the arresting idea of writing a book about memory that is also a memoir. As a psychologist clearly well up on the latest research, he shows how memory itself relies on language and storytelling. Investigating his own memories with a writerly eye, he brings to vibrant life scenes from a childhood refreshingly free of misery.' Sunday Times Books of the Year (read more)

'In his hybrid of autobiography, journalism and pop psychology, Fernyhough lets the stories speak for themselves to highlight memory’s personal, subjective and fragile qualities. Fernyhough takes us on a captivating journey into the mind. And he does so with great style.' Telegraph (read more)

'Outstanding… Fernyhough’s skills as a writer are evident both in the beautiful prose and in the way he uses literature to illustrate his argument… He draws on both science and art to marvellous effect.' Observer (read more)

'Restrained and lyrical... an immense pleasure.' New Scientist (read more)

'A sophisticated blend of findings from science, ideas from literature and examples from personal narratives… refreshing, well judged and at times moving. This is an unusual book but a very rewarding one.' Times Higher Education (read more)

'Fernyhough deftly guides us through memory's many facets... Often using himself as a test case, he adds context with research and snippets from a raft of great writers. A thoughtful study of how we make sense of ourselves.' Nature (read more)

'Absorbing... In offering us a meditation on memory, Fernyhough has something important to say about one of the forces that is central to our lives.' The Lady (read more)

'Fernyhough is a gifted writer who can turn any experience into lively prose... The stories in Pieces of Light... will entertain anyone who reads them.' Financial Times (read more)

'Many popular science writers try to blend the autobiographical and the anecdotal into their work; few do it as seamlessly and successfully as Charles Fernyhough.' Blackwell's Book Podcasts (read more)

'Fernyhough argues that we don’t simply possess a memory; we reconstruct it anew every time we need to remember… Through his own experiences and those of others, from the very young to the very old, he explores the mystery of remembering and the ambiguity of forgetting.' Saga Magazine

'An enthralling investigation of that ‘thing’ we call memory… manages to write about complex things in a clear and understandable way.' Ian McMillan, The Verb

'Pieces of Light will both linger in your memory and change the way you think about it.’ Daniel L. Schacter